D&D and Me

Dungeons and Dragons was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974. One can only imagine that these two would have never guessed the phenomena their little pen and paper fantasy/adventure game would become. Perhaps the most celebrated and patronized game in pop-culture, Dungeons and Dragons is widely considered the paradigm of geekdom. I began playing Dungeons and Dragons three years ago. I must be a geek.

While perusing the Sci-Fi fantasy section at Borders I began flipping through the D&D Players Hand Book (PHB) ver. 3.5. At the time I was heavily into Blizzard games (Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and World of Warcraft). I became excited at the chance to play in a fantasy based world with my friends…in person! I quickly remembered that my friend Chris had once mentioned he was a Dungeon Master and I called him to ask if he could show me how the game worked. Chris and I scheduled a time with some of my friends to play our first ever game of D&D. It was a blast.

I can’t recall all of the specifics now, but it became clear to me that night why D&D is such a popular game. Almost any player of D&D will tell you that playing the game is actually a very small part of why getting together for a game of D&D is fun. The jokes, beer, and laughter poured from our group as the three of us desperately attempted to cage a wild bird-owl that was running rampant in the small town our level 1 party was from. The fourth player, a very stoic cleric, stood idly by palm firmly pressed upon his forehead in embarrassment. After that night of play I was hooked.

Flash forward three years and the frequency of D&D games played amongst my friends has dropped significantly. We began seeing holes in the system and grew tired of certain people in our group just not being fun to play with. We have all ventured into other games and our PHB’s are all collecting dust on our bookshelves. However, I feel this is about to change.

A few days ago, over a works bowl from Flame Broiler, a friend of mine began discussing with me the changes to Dungeons and Dragons that came about in the recently released 4th edition. I quickly went out and purchased a copy and am now extremely excited to get back into the game that really started it all. In flipping through the rules it seems like Dungeons and Dragons really embraced itself. It did away with a lot of unnecessary randomness and really distinguished the roles between the various types of heroes. They also got with the times and are planning to supplement a lot of the materials online- a great business move if you ask me. As of right now I am hoping to get a game in ASAP. Beware my lvl. 1 Tiefling Warlock.